"If you don't know where you come from, you don't know where you're going." Sister Addie Wyatt
We Protest Every Sunday in Santa Rosa CA
The airline has contracted with the tRump administration to fly people who have been arrested without due process to deportation prisons.
This week we were serenaded by a women’s Balkan choir, Gradina. They wrote protest songs and handed out the lyrics so we could sing along. I met teachers, a librarian, a retired labor organizer and nurses. All good people who care about democracy and the rule of law.
She reunites with her fiance Gene on Red Beach
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 27
August 26-30, 1944
Finally, the time had come for the American Red Cross workers to follow the boys to France. Flo wrote in her diary:
Saturday, August 26, “Leaving for France with other clubmobile gals on Liberty tomorrow. Finished packing, changing money, sending home packages. No mail yet.”
Sunday, August 27
“3 mos. In Italy. Came aboard Jos. T. Dickman APA enroute to France with 25 clubmobile gals. Have one comp. on C deck together. Good food. Dance on top deck with phon.”
August 28
“On board ship. Fun with Lt. Scharff. Dancing in moonlight on deck. Very hot in compartment.”
August 29
“Still on ship—last day. No dance while at sea. Spent time with Lt. Scharff.”
(I don’t know who Lt. Scharff was. Flo did correspond with friends after the war, but there’s no indication she ever saw or corresponded with Lt. Scharff again.)
Wednesday August 30
Up at 5:00 a.m. for breakfast, but left ship after 8 o’clock. Landed on beach where 3rd made assault. Many ships in convoy. 36th E on beach; found Gene & saw Co. G. Wonderful to see him. Drove to Aix (Aix-en-Provence) with R.C. man & Dottie late in afternoon. Stayed at Thermes Hotel. Quaint place.
August 31
Cannot go up with Div. yet. Will be staying in Aix for a while and working in office. No work today, tho. Walked around town—very nice place—people clean and shops interesting. Prices high. No vehicles as yet. Miss Gene.
Sunday September 3
Down to Red Beach to see about car. Saw Gene.
September 4
With 36 E
36 E is the 36th Engineers, Flo’s fiancé, Gene’s unit.
Ch. 28: https://mollymartin.blog/?p=4065
His best friend dies: Murph loses his cool
Ch. 26 My Mother and Audie Murphy
D-Day in Southern France. August 15, 1944
They jump from the landing craft and wade through the swirling surf. From the hills above, German guns begin to crack. Shells burst among them. Medics move instantly, sleeves rolled, already tending to the fallen.
An explosion erupts on the left. When the smoke clears, the remains of a soldier lie scattered—he has stepped on a mine. A medic kneels beside him briefly, then signals to the litter bearers that there is nothing to carry.
Ahead lies a strip of scrub and tangled grass. The men advance toward it with cautious, deliberate steps, as though walking on eggshells. The entire beach is mined, every footstep a gamble.
They reach the edge of a green meadow. Beyond it stretch vineyards and scattered farmhouses, each one potentially harboring an unseen gun crew. Murphy drops into a drainage ditch and pushes forward, mud sucking at his boots as he moves.
They kill two Germans and capture six.
The thin shell of resistance at the beachhead collapses quickly, and the company advances inland. Three wooded hills rise to their right. From the center hill, a concrete pillbox juts outward, its cannon angled toward the beach. Intelligence marks this hill as a major strongpoint, and Murphy’s company receives the order to neutralize it.
Under a punishing sun, the men climb in sweat-soaked uniforms. Murphy’s platoon leads, and he brings up the rear. Suddenly automatic fire sweeps down from the hill.
Murphy’s two comrades are killed. He is alone and the Germans have discovered his position.
Then Murphy engages in acts of heroism that earn him one of his many medals. He duels with the enemy until his ammunition is exhausted. Then he seizes a machine gun and rakes the foxholes. Still under fire, he is joined by a comrade, his best buddy in the squad.
The surviving Germans wave a white cloth in surrender. Murphy’s friend rises casually from cover, believing the danger has passed. A hidden machine gun opens at once. He topples backward into the hole, barely whispering Murphy’s name before dying. Murphy freezes in shock, caught between the bodies of his friend and the Germans he has killed.
He checks for a pulse. There is none. He calls for medics, but the hill roars with gunfire. No one can reach him.
Grief and disbelief overwhelm him. He refuses to accept the death. With quiet, deliberate care, he lifts his friend from the hole and lays him beneath a cork tree, as though fresh air alone might restore life. How he avoids being shot while doing this remains inexplicable.
A machine gun shifts toward him. Murphy reacts instantly, diving back into the hole, throwing a grenade, and then rushing forward. The grenade has done its work. Both German gunners are dead. Murphy takes their weapon, checks it, and begins climbing the hill again.
He wrote: “I remember the experience as I do a nightmare. A demon seems to have entered my body. My brain is coldly alert and logical. I do not think of the danger to myself. My whole being is concentrated on killing. Later the men pinned down in the vineyard tell me that I shout pleas and curses at them because they do not come up and join me.”
He reaches the gun crew responsible and kills them before they even know he is there. He keeps firing until their bodies stop moving.
Resistance on the hill collapses. The company advances and reorganizes on the crest. Murphy stands apart, trembling, stunned by the sudden weakness that overtakes him. When the company moves on, he returns alone to his friend’s body.
He gathers his personal effects, looks once more at the photograph of the little girl with pigtails, then places the pack beneath his friend’s head like a pillow. He sits beside him and weeps without restraint.
As time passes, the rage drains away. The enemy becomes again simply the enemy—not monsters, not personal. The war resumes its relentless form: a series of brutal tasks carried out by flesh and will. Murphy accepts this, as he has every day since the war began.
And he rises, wipes his face, and walks back over the hill to rejoin the company.
Quotes are from From Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back
Ch. 27: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/15/flo-and-her-crew-sail-to-france/
May 10, 2025 Lots of honks from folks driving by
In a letter home, Flo writes of the strain of waiting
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 25
August 24, 1944. “We are in the process of waiting right now and it is very much of a strain, particularly since “our boys” are fighting and we worry so much about them. War is hell when you “sweat out” an invasion and it becomes pretty grim when you hear that someone you knew well and liked a great deal has been wounded or killed. We hope to be with them before too long.
“I have just started to comprehend Italian and will soon have to struggle with French, but I’m sure I’ll like it much better.
“I’ve gained at least 5 pounds, I am nut brown from outdoor life and feel excellent. The last two days I’ve had a sore throat and am now horse as a crow, but fine otherwise.
“Paris fell last evening. No word from Gene,” wrote Flo in her diary August 23.
“My “Love life” is taking time off, too, as the boyfriend is having a little argument with the Jerries right now. I hope he will “come back” but there is always the tragic possibility that he won’t, along with hundreds of others.
“The war advances are encouraging, though to us, not as encouraging as to the folks back home. I am afraid it will still be quite some time, but about that no one can tell for sure.
“It is as hot here as it must be at home in August. We didn’t mind it when we were in the country, but in the city it is very enervating and we notice it considerably.
“I love my job and I am fond of my coworkers, so I’ve never been sorry I came over. In fact, I feel as if I’ve really been doing something.
“Waiting around is hard, but we have even a bigger job ahead of us, as well as new scenes and new adventures.
“I will be just as glad to leave Italy – it has been fun here, but the people are very disillusioning– their whole standard of living is so far, far below what I expected and they seem to have no leaders, no particular ambition or initiative. Like much of Europe now, it is dirty and poor. We have very little to do with the natives and I am more often pitying them than not, but that is wearing. The poor children – there is no health standard and very little good food – the next generation will really suffer.
“Ruth (her sister), If you get a chance, please tell Mom to send me some combs – long ones. They have nothing but cheap short ones in the PX here and I’m destitute. Some Italian stole my two pair of dress shoes, so I’m completely dependent on those horrible black oxfords. Only one package has reached me from home as yet.”
Ch. 26: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/12/3rd-divisions-first-day-in-france/
Audie Murphy recalled landing on French soil
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 24
August 15, 1944. From Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back:
Audie Murphy later described the landing in southern France in his autobiography To Hell and Back. He recalled that, technically, the operation was considered perfect. The assault had been calculated to the smallest detail, every movement coordinated so that the effort unfolded with the smooth precision of a machine.
Compared to earlier invasions, resistance here was light. Weeks before, Allied forces had already broken out of Normandy and were cutting through northern France like a flood bursting through a levee. On the eastern front, the Russians were hammering the German armies. Overhead, American bombers were grinding German cities to rubble. Murphy likened Germany’s situation to that of a man hiding in a stolen house, frantically running between front and back doors as justice pounded from both sides—only to realize too late that another force was now rising up through the cellar. His regiment, Murphy observed, was that third force.
Yet the men in the landing craft knew nothing of this sweeping strategic picture. They saw only the edge of the boat, the immediate shoreline, and the moment that lay before them. Their first objective was a narrow, harmless-looking strip of sand called “Yellow Beach.” It was early morning in mid-August; a thin mist hovered above the flat fields beyond the shore, and beyond that, quiet green hills rose inland.
The bay between St. Tropez and Cavalaire was crowded with the familiar pattern of an amphibious assault. Battleships had already given the coastline a thorough pounding and now drifted silently in the background. Rocket craft followed, launching volleys that hissed through the air like schools of strange metallic fish, exploding mines and shredding barbed wire while rattling the nerves of the Germans waiting on shore.
Under this barrage, scores of landing boats churned forward. Murphy stood in one of them, gripped again by that old, stomach-knotting fear that always came before action. Around him, his men crouched like miserable, soaked cats. Some were seasick; others sat glassy-eyed, lost in the kind of inward withdrawal that came just before battle.
And then, in the midst of dread, Murphy felt the absurdity of the moment. Here they were—small, cold, wet men—thrust into a riddle vast as the sky. He laughed, as he often did when confronted with the enormity of life and death.
As the boats drew nearer, Murphy tried to rally his men by urging them to sing. They weren’t interested. But singing had long been a way soldiers kept fear in check, anger in rhythm, and marching in step. The Third Division even had its own song—Dogface Soldier—written in 1942 by two of its own, Sgt. Bert Gold and Lt. Ken Hart, both from Long Beach, New York. The division commander, Lucian Truscott, liked it so much he made it official. Third Division soldiers sang it, marched to it, and danced to it.
Years later, in 1955, when Murphy played himself in the film To Hell and Back, the song made its public debut. It became one of the most well-known songs of the war, celebrating not heroes of legend, but the ordinary infantryman—the “dogface” soldier who carried the rifle, slogged the mud, and shouldered the daily weight of the war.
The lyrics—simple, proud, and rough-edged—captured exactly who they were:
I Wouldn’t Give A Bean
To Be A Fancy Pants Marine
I’d Rather Be A
Dog Face Soldier Like I Am
I Wouldn’t Trade My Old OD’s
For All The Navy’s Dungarees
For I’m The Walking Pride
Of Uncle Sam
On Army Posters That I Read
It Says “Be All That You Can”
So They’re Tearing Me Down
To Build Me Over Again
I’m just a Dogface Soldier,
With a rifle on my shoulder,
And I eat a Kraut for breakfast every day.
So Feed Me Ammunition
Keep Me In the Third Division
Your DogFace Soldier’s A-Okay
Ch. 25: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/07/ready-to-leave-poor-italy/
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 23
After Goodbyes, Four Days of Bliss
August 1944 was a month of waiting. The men Flo and her friends had waved off were now at sea, sailing toward the battlefields of Southern France. Their D-Day, scheduled for August 15, loomed heavy in the minds of the Red Cross women left behind. It might be weeks, they were warned, before the coast was clear enough for them to follow. On August 8, the women moved from the camp at Pozzuoli to a residence next to headquarters in Naples.
After days of stifling heat and restless worry in Naples, the women were granted leave. Flo, Dottie, and Isabella fled to Sorrento, trading the grit and noise of the city for something closer to paradise. Flo captured it all in a letter home:
“We have been resting for several days and spent four wonderful days at Sorrento in a lovely old hotel, which is now an officers rest camp. It was peaceful and lovely down there after the hot, noisy, dirty city and seemed like a different world. We were in bathing suits and shorts most of the time, swimming and sailing. They not only have white sails on the boats, but red, Blue and terra-cotta. It is a picturesque site – the sailboats skimming along on that blue, blue water with veri-colored sails.
In her diary Flo wrote about her flirtation with a cute French officer in Sorrento. She called him a “very romantic boy.”
“Italy has its good points and they are nearly all scenery. We took the one-day boat excursion trip to Capri and it is as romantic and lovely as all the songs and posters say. It is out of this world and is surrounded by the clearest, bluest water I’ve seen. The island itself is quaint– abounding in all kinds of flowers, trees, lovely shrines and cathedrals, which date back to the 15th century.
“To make my few vacation days even more unusual and romantic, I met a cute French officer, who made a big hit with all – male and female – staying at the hotel. He spoke a very few words of English and I no French, but we got along beautifully and I took a great deal of kidding about it. Even in his broken English, he was quite a smoothie, and so sincere about it all. They are such sentimentalists, but confidentially I prefer them to the English.”
Flo wrote about their trip to Sorrento and Capri in her diary
They sailed to Capri, where the sea was so blue it looked unreal, and the hillsides spilled over with flowers and ancient shrines. Flo met a young French officer, charming even in broken English, and spent a day with him swimming, sailing, and dancing under the southern sun.
In her diary, she noted the date — August 15 — and scribbled the words: “Hope 3rd Div. okey.” She took a drive along the Amalfi coast, marveling at the villages clinging to cliffs above the sea. For a moment, the war felt far away, almost unreal.
But when the four days ended, reality closed back around them. Returning to Naples, Flo and the others slipped once more into the long, anxious business of waiting — and worrying about the boys they had left behind. She wrote in her diary, “May be here for another two weeks. Invasion going well, but worry about boys and especially Gene. Hope he escapes.”
Ch. 24: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/02/operation-dragoon-the-landing/
That’s me with the sign saying REFUND NOW! OMGoddess! I look like an old man (nothing against old men).
Here’s the accompanying news story:
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – Protesters lined the streets of the road leading up to the front doors of the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, sending a message to Avelo Airlines.
Signs with words and phrases like “fascism” and “no due process” caught the eyes of drivers heading to the airport.
“I’m out here because I believe in democracy,” said Ken Malik of Santa Rosa.
People from all over Sonoma County spent the two busiest hours of the airport expressing frustration at Avelo Airlines; an airline that recently expanded into Wine Country.
“I flew Avelo over the summer. It was great,” said Roxanne Goodfellow of Santa Rosa.
She joined in on the protest with a group called Indivisible Sonoma County.
“It says something about the whole corporate mentality that they would do this,” Goodfellow said.
Earlier this month, Avelo announced it would enter into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, planning to commit three planes to fly deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And due to low demand, it will shut down its hub in Sonoma County.
“After significant deliberations, we determined this charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 crew members employed for years to come,” said company CEO Andrew Levy in an April 9 statement.
“I’m Jewish. It reminded me of the people who might have profiteered being the train company to take those people to camp,” said Nora Pearl of Petaluma.
“You have got an organization like Avelo who wants to make money on peoples’ grief and heartache,” said Malik. “We have to do something about it. I’m 80 years old, and I’m still an activist and the times are as troubling now as they were in the ’60s.”
In response to this protest, Avelo released this statement:
While we recognize the right of individuals to peacefully assemble, Avelo’s main priority will continue to be maintaining the safety and timeliness of our operation.
The airline will begin operating its deportation flights out of Arizona starting May 12.
Citizens object to deportation flights
April 26, 2025
Hundreds of angry Sonoma County citizens line the road to Charles Schulz airport in Santa Rosa CA to protest Avelo Airlines contracting with ICE to conduct deportation flights. The airline is also ripping off customers by cancelling our flights and refusing to refund our money. They stole $518 from us.
May Day 2025
My Regular Pagan Holiday Post
Wide Hollow Elementary School in Yakima, Washington, was already an old building when I began attending in the 1950s. At the time, it served students from first through eighth grades. The little kids were on the first floor, the big kids upstairs. I remember the worn wooden steps leading to the second floor, scalloped by generations of student feet.
Our classrooms held old-fashioned desks—wooden with ornate cast-iron legs—each one with a small hole in the top for an ink bottle. We were taught how to fill our fountain pens by dipping the nib into the ink and lifting a lever to draw it in. (This cannot have happened without spills—the poor teachers!)
Every room had a long wall of blackboard, with erasers that students cleaned by smacking them together, creating great clouds of chalk dust. The tall windows were opened using a long pole. Above the blackboards, neat rows of Palmer Method cursive letters reminded us of the proper way to form our handwriting.
The school was heated by a coal furnace. A coal chute led to the basement, where the coal man would periodically unload his delivery.
Outside, the playground seemed enormous. A towering maple tree stood right outside the building. We had swings, a slide, and a ride called the “ocean wave”—a notoriously dangerous contraption rumored to have killed children in other schools. As far as I know, ours survived it, though I did rip my good dress riding it on the very first day of first grade.
At recess, we played Ring Around the Rosie, Red Rover, jump rope, tetherball, and a game where we bounced a ball against the wall chanting, “Not last night but the night before, 24 robbers came knocking at my door.”
Much has changed. The old building was torn down years ago and replaced. The curriculum has become more inclusive. I still remember being twelve and furious that our new history books made no mention of the Indigenous peoples of the area. Today, Wide Hollow proudly displays a land acknowledgment on its website:
“We would like to acknowledge that we’re coming to you from the traditional lands of the first people of our valley, the 14 Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and we honor with gratitude the land itself and the Yakama Tribe.”
Wide Hollow is now a K–5 school. They host a “multicultural celebration,” but I don’t believe the ancient pagan Spring holiday of May Day is among those still observed. Back in our day, we celebrated May Day by weaving ribbons around a maypole (perhaps the tetherball pole?) and making May baskets, often filled like Easter baskets with flowers.
While May Day celebrations have largely fallen out of fashion in the U.S., they still take place in some towns. In Europe, the tradition persists more strongly. In modern pagan communities, May Day has been revived and reimagined through the Celtic festival of Beltane.
In Sweden, maypole dancing has shifted to the big Summer Solstice festivals, but until the 19th century, May Day was celebrated with mock battles between Summer and Winter. I love this account by Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough (1911):
“On May Day two troops of young men on horseback used to meet as if for mortal combat. One of them was led by a representative of Winter clad in furs, who threw snowballs and ice in order to prolong the cold weather. The other troop was commanded by a representative of Summer, covered with fresh leaves and flowers. In the sham fight which followed, the party of Summer came off victorious, and the ceremony ended with a feast.”
Note: the picture of Wide Hollow school at the top is a postcard labeled North Yakima. That means the picture was taken before 1918 when North Yakima was changed to Yakima. So the school was originally built probably in the teens.
May 1 is also International Workers Day
May 1st is also recognized globally as International Workers’ Day. In 1889, the date was chosen by an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions to commemorate the Haymarket Affair—a violent deadly police riot in Chicago in 1886 targeting workers organizing for the eight-hour workday.
Here in Sonoma County, this year May Day marks the beginning of the Days of Action May 1-5, organized by Community United to Resist Fascism (CURF). The International Workers’ Day march will call for immigrant rights and is co-organized with the May 1st Coalition. The event will begin at 3 p.m. in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, proceed to the Board of Supervisors’ office, and then continue to Old Courthouse Square to rally at 5pm. I’ll see you there!
For more information and to sign up for the coalition: https://www.pjcsoco.org/event—santa-rosa-protests-may-1—5.html
tradeswomn musings 